Brussels, 24/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Eurogroup is encouraging Spain and Cyprus to continue with their reforms processes and to ensure they keep sound public finances. These encouragements were made for Spain in the light of the third post-aid programme monitoring report and for Cyprus in the light of the return of the aid programme monitoring mission in the wake of developments on the island.
“We welcome the significant progress made by Spain,” said the head of Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, adding: “But we realise that debt and unemployment are still high so there are clearly important challenges ahead.” The Cypriot programme is now back on track after delays over the foreclosure rules, which is “Good news,” said Dijsselbloem. It is hoped that the Eurogroup monitoring mission in Cyprus will complete its work ahead of the Eurogroup meeting in May so that the next instalment of aid may be forthcoming from the European Stability Mechanism in June. Cypriot finance minister Harris Georgiades discussed the aid programme on Friday with this newsletter. We will be returning to this. (Elodie Lamer)